Observations on economics, the academy, the wider world, and things that run on rails.

25.5.16

HIGHER EDUCATION BECLOWNS ITSELF.

It's Oberlin, again, and, dear reader, yes, the sun rosein the east this morning. But the latest idiocy is different. "The students [The New Yorker's Nathan] Heller interviewed seem to think they're not at college to be educated: they are at college to educate everyone else." Here's an example, from a Jasmine Adams out of Chicago.

“We’re asking to be reflected in our education,” Adams cuts in. “I literally am so tired of learning about Marx, when he did not include race in his discussion of the market!” She shrugs incredulously. “As a person who plans on returning to my community, I don’t want to assimilate into middle-class values. I’m going home, back to the ’hood of Chicago, to be exactly who I was before I came to Oberlin.”

Yes, and Chicago is going to be exactly what it was before she went to Oberlin. Embrace the suck.

Reason's Robby Soave is gentler. "You should change who you are, and what you think, in college. It's a transformative experience. That's the entire point. It's what you're paying for."